Last night was the series premiere of Fox’s brand new original series, Terra Nova. Whenever Fox releases a new television series people, myself included, are often skeptical because they seem to have a strange habit of cancelling shows that have incredible potential (Arrested Development, Undeclared, The Tick, the list seriously just keeps going) and giving seasons to shows that are down right terrible (Titus, The Cleveland Show). Unfortunately for Terra Nova, Fox has an even worse habit of cancelling new a series that is in Sci Fi genre, but all that aside Terra Nova does seem to be relatively promising.
“At the dawn of the 22nd Century. The world is on the verge of environmental collapse. Mankind’s only hope for survival, lies 85 million years in the past.” These are the words that we are greeted with as the show opens, and as these words appear we are shown a vision of earth, from space, that looks down right disgusting. Above the surface of the ocean and clouds that we normally see on our planet from outer space are these obvious clouds of pollution and they are everywhere the eye can see. Not only is this future so polluted and desolate that people need gas masks (re-breathers) just to breath the outside air and something as simple as an orange is a highly valued and extremely rare commodity. Once inside Terra Nova, the air is clean and fresh fruit is plentiful but there are other dangers constantly lurking. The environment outside of Terra Nova is deadly enough and there is even another camp where a group who broke away from Terra Nova live. This group refers to themselves as the Sixers and they attack Terra Nova regularly.
I thought the CGI in this show was really lacking. I wasn’t expecting movie quality by any means, but they looked incredibly dated. Parts were done well but anytime there was camera movement over a large CG area, for example the opening scene of the city, looked embarrassingly primitive. The dinosaurs and other computer generated creatures however did look somewhat believable, until they interacted directly with real people which only happened a handful times and those sequences were short enough to go almost unnoticed but not completely. Other than those few moments of poor CGI the special effects in this show were pretty solid. The vehicles and weapons all looked amazing, but the scenery is what really stood out more than anything else. The environment for which Terra Nova is set is incredibly beautiful and terrifying at the same time which is exactly the way it should be.
For everything the CGI lacked, the dialogue and acting most certainly made up for. All of the characters are written well and each actor does a tremendous job playing their role. Jason O’Mara and Stephen Lang in particular play the roles of fearless soldiers with bottomless hearts and do so in such a way that it makes it impossible for viewers to feel anything but deep compassion for their characters. Landon Liboiron does an excellent job of being the angry teenager who has a high amount of angst against his father, and is highly believable. His friends he makes almost immediately, however, are not as gifted and come of as obnoxious but their moments on the screen are short enough that they don’t get a chance to fully get on your nerves.
Terra Nova looks to be an outstanding series that Fox has added to their Lineup. While the backdrop for the show seems kind of far fetched and down right dumb, Terra Nova does a fantastic job of not focusing on that aspect of the show any longer than it had to. The true heart of this series is what goes on inside the world for which the chosen, and lucky, people get to live. While this first episode only gives us glimpses as to where the story will go, the teaser trailer at the end revealed a whole lot more. The hints that we got about how this season is going to unfold looks like it could be either highly entertaining or extremely disappointing. Either way I can’t wait to tune in next Monday.
Middle of the Row 
First things first, Joss Whedon should have his own “shows cancelled too soon by Fox” subcategory, which would include Firefly and Dollhouse.
Now my thoughts about the show:
1 – They really need some more creative names… “Oh no! The Carnitaurous is coming! I bet it eats meat!” Then there is a girl named Sky, which I cannot get past because my family used to have a bird with this name. And then “Sixers.” I mean, the names work, but the first and last are very matter of fact.
2 – Speaking of the sixers, this seems like Terra Nova’s attempt at getting the Lost crowd. These guys have broken off from the main group, fight against them, live out on the outskirts but are still a mystery to us as compared to our knowledge of Terra Nova (granted it has secrets all on its own)… Point is we’ve got our “Others” for this show, now add the drawings on top of that and they are really trying to add mystery to this survival show.
3 – The time stream. Talk about a cheap way of getting around the “step on a butterfly and the future will be run by kangaroos” train of thought. I mean, without having this the show would be full of complications in this aspect so I appreciate that they give some explanation as to how they are getting around this complete destruction for the connection of history and the future, but it was just thrown in. I want to hear more about it.
4 – Stephen Lang’s cadence is just too weird. You are not John Wayne! Stop talking like that! He fits the part and all, but I really wanted to throat punch him.
What did you think about this stuff?
1. I agree, the names of the dinosaurs in particular are incredibly lame and as far as everything else eh so so. They aren’t good at all but I wouldn’t call them bad.
2. I agree, they definitely seem to be targeting the lost crowd but at the same time I think if they were really trying to capture the lost crowd, the trailers leading up to the premiere would’ve had more of J.J. Abrams flare to them. I think the trailer at the end of the episode gave too much away. They basically just showed us that the reason the “Sixers” separated from Terra Nova was because they disagreed with whatever they were doing with their dinosaur experiments. I feel like their main purpose of the “Sixers” was to create tension between O’Mara’s character and Lang’s. O’Mara abides by the rules and enforces them but he still likes to choose what is “right” over what is law, and it seems that the “Sixers” are the “right” and Terra Nova, and especially Nathaniel Taylor, are the law.
3. Yeah I completely agree, that was insanely cheap. I feel like the writers did that a few times in this show. For example O’Mara sneaking in himself and his daughter, and he had a gun. All of these things were completely against the law but once confronted by Lang he just says he doesn’t care about laws from another time, but he should. That other time controlled who came to Terra Nova and sent everyone who is already living there, there so how can he not care?
4. I really don’t know how to respond to this one, it really didn’t bother me.
Yeah I wouldn’t worry about #4, I think I still just hate him due to his character in Avatar, especially since this new character is comparable to it.